The latest chapter of a tragedy

You know what the basis for the story is, and to be honest, I’m past the point where I feel like describing the awful details of what he saw or reported he saw in the Lasch Building showers in February of 2001 is fruitful. You know that story. This one is a bit of a look into what’s next for McQueary, who is expected of course to be the key witness in the perjury trials of former president Graham Spanier, Vice President Gary Schultz and athletic director Tim Curley later this year. It’s a sad, sad tale of what happened to a guy who had so much promise, a guy who lives with whether how he handled that decision was right or wrong to this day, and forever.

You know, I think all of this will ultimately be a thing of the past for Penn State. I really do. Give it a few years, and it will have been an incident learned from. Or, at least, it could be. I think Joe Paterno’s reputation can be restored if it’s proven during these trials he really did know less than initially assumed. I think the football program has rebounded, and I think the university’s reputation among the top high school students in the state and their parents will continue to get better. But I don’t think this will ever be anything but a fresh, damning, bleeding, painful wound in Mike McQueary’s life.

Every once in a while, having been a Penn State student during better times and a reporter covering that awful incident, you think of something or see a story that brings you right back to State College in November of 2011. This is one of those stories.

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